TAISTE V— TANA GER 943 



or cotton thread picked up ; and after joassing the thread through 

 the leaf, it makes a knot at the end to fix it." Species of Tailor- 

 bird more or less nearly allied are found throughout the greater part 

 of the Indian Region ; but some of them would appear not always 

 to build their nests in this fashion ; and birds of the genus Cisticola, 

 to which belongs the Fantail-Warblee, C. cursiians, that inhabits 

 the South of Europe, ply the same trade on stems of grass, 

 confining them by stitches above the nest, which is built among 

 them and takes a globular form. Both Orthotomus and Cisticola 

 are remarkable for the variation in colour of the eggs they lay, 

 which in the case of the latter is said to depend on the season 

 of the year (cf. Eggs, p. 189). All these birds are referred by 

 most systematists to a subfamily of Sylviidse (Warbler) known as 

 Drynicecinse, but at present nothing can be said with certainty on 

 that point. Dr. Sharpe {Cat. B. Br. Mus. vii. p. 215) places them 

 in his Tirneliidx, with the true members of which group they seem 

 to have little in common. 



TAISTEY or TYSTY (spelling uncertain), Icel. >mte, the 

 Shetland name for the DovEKEY of sailors (p. 166) and Black 

 GrUiLLEMOT of books (p. 399), Uria grylle. 



TAKAHE, the Maori name of Notomis {cf. Moorhen, pp. 591, 

 592), adopted by the settlers in the South Island of New Zealand, 

 where it is supposed still to exist. 



TALENTER, used fancifully for Hawk (Thos. Middleton, The 

 World Tost at Tennis, 1620), as having "talents," i.e. talons — these 

 words being often confounded, or played upon, as by Shakespear 

 {Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 2, 65). 



TAMMY-NORIE, a northern form of Tom-Noddy, and a name 

 for the Puffin (p. 750). 



TANAGER, a word adapted from the quasi-Latin Tanagra of 

 Linnaeus, which again is an adaptation, perhaps with a classical 

 allusion, of Tangara, used by Brisson and BufFon, and said by 

 Marcgrave {Hist. Pier. Nat. Bras. p. 214) to be the Brazilian name 

 of certain birds found in that country. From them it has since been 

 extended to a gi'eat many others mostly belonging to the southern 

 portion of the New World, now recognized by ornithologists as 

 forming a distinct Family of Oscines, and usually considered to be 

 allied to the Fringillidx (FiNCH, p. 250) ; but, as may be inferred 

 from Prof. Parker's remarks {Trans. Zool. Soc. x. pp. 252, 253 and 

 267), the Tanagridse are a "feebler" form, and thereby bear out 

 the opinion based on the examination of many types both of Birds 

 and Mammals as to the lower morphological rank of the Neotropical 

 Fauna as a whole (GEOGRAPHICAL Distribution, pp. 321-323). 



The Tanagers are a group in which Mr. Sclater has for many 



